The SHRM Senior Certified Professional (SHRM-SCP)

Which recruitment metric is determined by examining communication effectiveness, ability to motivate others, leadership ability, cultural fit, and an individual ' s performance for two or three years?

At a regional power company, managers are in charge of assigning training and development opportunities to their employees. These opportunities are sponsored by the company, and employees are entitled to their regular pay while attending training and development sessions. Recently, there has been a growing number of complaints that managers were engaging in favoritism by only assigning these training and development opportunities to their favorite employees. Favoritism violates company policy, which states that all employees must be given equal opportunities. The HR director aims to address this issue.

Some managers claim that they assign training and development opportunities to their high-performing employees as they believe it is an incentive to stay at the company. How should the HR director determine whether this has been effective as an objective?

A start-up company specializing in technology is acquired by a larger international organization located in a foreign country. Following the acquisition, a manager from the international company schedules a virtual social hour so employees on the manager ' s team can bond outside of work hours. During the virtual social hour, employees from the start-up experience difficulties understanding the international employees due to language barriers. An employee from the start-up writes an inappropriate comment making fun of how the international employees speak intending to send it to a co-worker but accidentally sends the message to the whole team. The manager reports the employee ' s behavior to an HR specialist, who documents the incident. A few weeks later the HR specialist receives an email from the employee who sent the message indicating that the employee ' s manager is acting hostile toward the employee, and the employee ' s manager mentioned that the international company should never have acquired the start-up.

The HR specialist is concerned the manager ' s negative comment about the acquisition will lead to other employees having negative opinions about the acquisition. Which action should the HR specialist take to address this concern?

Which strategy is most effective in motivating individual employee performance?

A start-up technology company is growing rapidly, and senior leadership would like the company to be publicly traded in the near future. The company regularly exceeds its financial goals, but outside analysts express concerns about the inconsistent practices and procedures within the company. The company values innovation, and very little attention is paid to documenting or standardizing work processes. This provides employees with a great deal of freedom to experiment in their roles, but it also leads to confusion about individual assignments and areas of responsibility. In preparation for a public offering, the company ' s leadership asks the HR director to gather information on best work practices in every functional area and create the required documentation.

The HR director does not have the technology knowledge necessary to understand many of the best work practices recommendations provided by employees. What should the HR director do to ensure all information included in the best work practices documentation is accurate?

A nonprofit health care facility conducts an engagement and culture survey, and the results indicate that employees throughout the organization believe leadership engages in favoritism by providing unequal opportunities for staff. General perceptions of the company ' s culture are poor, and many employees report intentions to leave their jobs. Several additional concerning findings are isolated to the philanthropic department, which is responsible for acquiring donors and securing charitable partnerships. Employees from this department report poor working relationships among staff, including gossiping and bullying among co-workers. Although the leadership team is aware of the poor working relationships in the philanthropic department, they have not asked the department director to address the issues because of the department ' s outstanding performance in recent years. However, after considering the recent survey results the leadership team decides to initiate a project to address the culture issues at the facility overall and within the philanthropy department specifically. The operations VP will oversee the project and ask an HR business partner (HRBP) to lead the project. The VP of operations requests that the HRBP collect additional survey data and conduct focus groups during the first phase of the project.

Some members of the leadership team provide the HRBP with a list of employees that they think would be good participants for the focus groups. These leaders are adamant that the HRBP should draw participants from the list. Which action should the HRBP take?

A large retail company opens a distribution center directly across the street from a small competing firm ' s distribution center and posts a sign advertising open entry-level positions. The plant manager of the small firm notices that the sign indicates the advertised salary is higher than what the firm pays its entry-level employees. The plant manager is concerned employees will leave the firm to seek work at the competing company. The plant manager notifies the HR manager of the pay differences and requests immediate pay matching for all entry-level employees. The HR manager sets up a meeting with the plant manager, compensation manager, and HR business partner to discuss the issue. They decide to increase base pay to match the competitor ' s base pay but only for a subset of entry-level roles identified as critical. They also decide to put the pay increase into effect immediately, and the HR manager agrees to monitor the situation over the next three months.

How should the HR manager communicate the new pay increase to current entry-level employees?

A new HR director is hired into the HR department of one at a midsize, engineering company. The HR director immediately notices that, unlike all other major departments, HR is never invited to any important meetings, or involved in strategic discussions. The president of the company sees the sole use of an HR department as meeting legal requirements and the core duties of the HR director are to onboard new employees, help them complete their paperwork and address employee complaints. The HR director sees several areas where HR can add value to the company such as improving employee engagement, automating various HR systems, and introducing a performance review process. The HR director recognizes that the company needs one to two additional HR employees to truly be able to implement these important initiatives. When the HR director asks the president about the possibility of hiring two new HR employees, the president laughs and replies that one HR employee is costing the company more than enough.

While developing the performance appraisal system, several employees explain to the HR director that they largely work independently, making it difficult to provide ratings for others. What approach should the HR director propose to meet the needs of the company?

A multinational manufacturing firm recently experienced a series of product line defects and supply chain shortages. At the request of the chief operating officer (COO), the firm hires a new VP of operations who worked for the COO at another company for many years. The VP is well known for achieving results quickly and efficiently. During a conference call with the COO and all operations managers, the new VP begins making angry remarks toward the managers because the VP believes they are not responding quickly to questions about the recent problems. When the managers speak the VP responds by criticizing them and speaking with a loud aggressive tone of voice. The COO advises the VP to focus on identifying the root cause of the problem rather than criticizing the managers. In response, the VP accuses the COO of being too lenient on the managers during a period of crisis that requires quick and deliberate action. After the meeting, the managers send a formal letter to the firm ' s regional HR director describing the VP ' s behavior and requesting an immediate response.

The regional HR director discovers that the VP ' s onboarding process was shortened because the firm needed the VP to oversee multiple high-visibility initiatives. What should the regional HR director do to ensure the VP understands the business impact of the company ' s leadership and culture standards?